I would assume it's considered bad form to tag if the person being tagged knows you are present. Surprise would seem to be part of the fun.

CSB:

My wife's family passes around an old bottle of beer from a camping trip her father and his brother took decades ago. The story goes that the beer was amazingly bad and each brother tried to sneak the last bottle into the other's bag before the trip was over to get rid of it.

Fast forward and now it gets passed back and forth between the next generation in ways that are continuing to execute in complexity. It has been hidden inside of a gourd that the target was asked to help cut up for dinner. It has been presented on a fancy cruise by the wait staff as desert. It has been presented as part of a wedding toast by the maid of honor to the target bride. Etc etc etc.

Standing unwritten rules are once you've received a pass you can't pass back to the person that gave it to you, and that you can't pass until some hazily defined period has passed after you got it (preventing serial passing at a single family event).

I'd guess they likely have similar unwritten rules about their tagging that make it more fun.

ArkPanda:Farce-Side: Glob forbid, but suppose the one who is "it" suddenly passes before tagging someone. How then does the game proceed?

A mysterious envelope delivered by a courier in the dead of night. Opening it reveals a piece of paper with only two words.

"You're it."

There's a great story about Harpo Marx playing "murder" in someone's mansion years ago. He had gone into one of the bathrooms, unrolled a bit of the TP, and written "Your (sic) dead" or something similar on it. His random victim used the bathroom, and had to play dead until the rest of the guests figured out who the murderer was. It didn't take long, since Harpo was known for his lack of orthographic skills.

HairyTwatter:So, a link to a blog about the article, rather than a link to the article itself? Ok then.

Apparently Fark won't link to the WSJ.

/Instead we get a link to a derp site//At least the article is non-derp///But there's that ad about the Scary Mooselimbs persecuting poor Michelle Bachmann////Now I've got it on Fark as well\/'Scuse me while I dump my cookies